That pierces, mounting stair on stair,
The inmost ring of battlement.
Oft-times that frowning gate I've past
(This time, but one, shall be the last)
Where the tribal demon's image stands
Crowning the arch, and on the side
Are scarlet prints of woman's hands-
Farewell! and forth must the lady ride,
Her face unveiled, in rich attire,
She strikes the stone with fingers red, "Farewell the palace, to the pyre
We follow, widows of the dead!" And I, whose life has reached its verge, Bethink me of the wailing dirge
That day my father forth was borne
High seated, swathed in many a shawl, By priests who scatter flowers, and mourn; And the eddying smoke of the funeral.
Thus did he vanish; with him went
Seven women, by the flames set free;
I built a stately monument
To shrine their graven effigy :
In front my father, godlike, stands,
The widows kneel with folded hands;
All yearly rites are duly paid,
All round are planted sacred trees,
And the ghosts are soothed by the spreading shade, And lulled by the strain of their obsequies.
His days were troubled; his curse I earned
Full often, ere he passed that arch,
My father, by his farms we burned,
By raiding on the English march;
And then that summer I rebelled,
One fort we seized, and there we held
Until my father's guns grew hot;
But the floods and darkness veiled our flight,
We rode their lines with never a shot,
For the matches were moist in the rainy night.
That's forty years ago; and since,
With all these wild unruly clans,
In this salt wilderness, a prince
Of camel-riding caterans,
I've sought religiously, Heaven knows,
A life of worship and repose,
Vext by the stiff ungrateful league
Of all my folk in fretful stir,
By priests and gods in dark intrigue,
And the wasting curse of the sorcerer.
They say I seized their broad estates,
Upbraid me with a kinsman's blood;
He led his bands before my gates,
And then-it was an ancient feud;
But I must offer gifts, and pray
The Brahmin's stain be washed away.
Saint and poisoner, fed with bribes,
Deep versed in every traitorous plan—
I told them only to kill the scribes,
But my Afgháns hated the holy man.
Yes, peace is blessed, and prayer is good;
My eldest son defied my power;
I lost his mother in the wood
That hides my lonely hunting-tower:
She was a proud unbroken dame:
Like son, like mother, hard to tame
Or tire-And so he took the bent,
His mother's kinsfolk at his heel,
With many a restless malcontent;
There were some had ease, ere I sheathed my steel.
The English say I govern ill,
That laws must silence spear and So may my peaceful subjects till; But peaceful subjects have I none.
I can but follow my father's rule,
I cannot learn in an English school;
Yet the hard world softens, and change is best,
My sons must leave the ancient ways,
The folk are weary, the land shall rest,
And the gods are kind, for I end my days.
Then carry me to my castle steep,
Whose time is ending with its lord's:
Eight months my grandsire held the keep
Against the fierce Maratha hordes ;
It would not stand three winter suns
Before the shattering English guns ;
And so these rude old faithful stones,
My father's haven in high war-tide,
Must rive and moulder, as soon my bones
Shall bleach on the holy river-side.
Years hence, when all the earth is calm,
And forts are level, and foes agree,
Since feuds must end, to trade and farm,
And toil, like oxen, patiently;
When this my garden-palace stands
A desert ruin, choked with sands,
A broken well 'mid trees that fade,
Some traveller still my name may bless,
The chief long syne that left him shade
And a water spring in the wllderness.
JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD
This the house of Circe, queen of charms-
A kind of beacon-cauldron poised on high,
Hooped round with ember-clasping iron bars,
Sways in her palace porch, and smoulderingly
Drips out in blots of fire and ruddy stars;
But out behind that trembling furnace air,
The lands are ripe and fair,
Hush are the hills and quiet to the eye.
The river's reach goes by
With lamb and holy tower and squares of corn,
And shelving interspace
Of holly bush and thorn
And hamlets happy in an Alpine morn,
And deep-bowered lanes with grace
Of woodbine newly born.
But inward o'er the hearth a torch-head stands
Inverted, slow green flames of fulvous hue,
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